Articles Tagged withQueens Fire

Two people died and one person was injured in two separate fire accidents in New York City yesterday. Both of them were sparked by lit cigarettes, officials said today. A first fire started Monday morning around 9:00 am in Queens. Andre Reid, a 69 year old retired firefighter died in the blaze. The man had first helped his wife getting out of the house and then he decided to go back in the house to retrieve something. Firefighters found him unconscious in his bedroom. He was transported to the hospital where he died from smoke inhalation. Later on during the day another fire was sparked by a lit cigarette in Brooklyn. The fire started in the bathroom of an apartment in Propsect Lefferts Gardens. There weren’t any smoke detectors in the apartment and the fire quickly spread to the rest of the apartment. A 65 year old woman died and another resident was injured.

The Fire Department of New York is investigating why it took 21 minutes for an ambulance to get to a fire that broke out in a home in Far Rockaway, Queens last Sunday. The calls arrived in the 911 system at 11:51 am and at 11:56 am the firefighters arrived at the location of the blaze. The firefighters pulled two 4 year old children, Jai’Launi Tinglin and Ayina Tinglin (picture), from the fire and tried to resuscitate them but they were unsuccessful. They were asking: Where is EMS? Where is EMS?

According to the NY Daily News, the ambulance was only dispatched to the fire at 12:05 am, 14 minutes after the 911 call and arrived at the scene at 12:12 am, 21 minutes after the first call to 911.

It is not the first time that glitches happen with New York 911. In June last year, Ariel Russo was struck and killed by a reckless driver on the Upper West Side and glitches with 911 led to a 4 minute delay in the arrival of the ambulance. The Russo family is suing the city for negligence.